No, I can’t use my laser cutter to actually remove the copper on the PCBs. Unfortunately. Well, I haven’t tried as I expect it won’t work. But I can use it to remove the photoresist, instead of using a transparency and UV box. I’m not sure it’s simpler, but I wanted to give it a go anyway. Â Here is a picture of the board after I’ve ‘engraved’ it using the lasercutter.

And here is a picture after it’s been etched, the normal way, using FeCL. The FeCL solution was a bit old, so the quality of the etching is a bit uneven. It shows promise, though I must admit I’m increasingly using professionally produced boards. But for a quick prototype, this is quite simple and fast.

I’m trying to make a garage door opener using some cheap CC2500 boards bought through a group-buy at 43oh.comÂ and a great breakoutÂ board designed by RobG. I’ve made a prototype first, and it seems to work, but is not very pretty. I need to maybe make it more compact and make a case for it. Here’s a picture:

The code is definitely not finished, but you can download it here if you want to look at it.